Much has been written about Garbo over the years, but Gottlieb, a former editor of this magazine, has produced a particularly charming, companionable, and clear-eyed guide to her life and work—he has no axe to grind, no urgent need to make a counterintuitive case for her lesser movies, and he’s generous with his predecessors. By the end of the biography, I felt I understood Garbo better as a person, without the aura of mystery around her having been entirely dispelled—and, at this point, who would want it to be? ... Though she had a sense of humor, she emerges in Gottlieb’s portrait as prickly, stubborn, and stingy ... In today’s terms, Garbo might have occupied a spot along the nonbinary spectrum. Gottlieb doesn’t press the point, but remarks, 'How ironic if ‘the Most Beautiful Woman in the World’ really would rather have been a man.'
The why and wherefore of this woman’s extraordinary life and career is masterfully told in Robert Gottlieb’s new book, Garbo, handsomely published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, with more than 250 splendid duotone photos, an extremely thorough filmography...all part of a terrific 100-page 'Garbo Reader' ... This generous addendum includes an amazing selection of Garbo material—comments by everyone from Ingmar to Ingrid Bergman, Tennessee Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Noël Coward ... This 'Reader' is preceded by 18 tight chapters that eloquently take us from a Swedish childhood of poverty and a woeful lack of education...but with many girlish dreams of becoming a great stage actress, all the way to international fame and wealth ... The book is written in a serious but witty, unpretentious, and often charming way, and does a fine job in trying to understand Garbo’s complicated personality.
Gottlieb seems for this project to have consumed everything written in English about Garbo and her circle ... Garbo’s Hollywood films are the heart of the book, and Gottlieb pithily describes all the star vehicles she was paid handsomely to push uphill ... Gottlieb’s critiques of the finished films hold them to today’s standards of watchability while appreciating their old-school charms ... Gottlieb evinces sympathy and fondness for Garbo.
Gottlieb is a renowned New York editor who at the age of 90 has earned the right to be self-indulgent and he chats wittily about his idol while leaving others to do the hard work of analysing Garbo’s appeal ... Best of all, Gottlieb dispenses with words in a gallery of photographs in which Garbo cups her head like the calyx of a flower, lowers her eyelids to semaphore desire or perhaps drowsiness and smokes a cigarette as if lighting a candle to place on her own altar. The mutable human face is saved from decay and flesh and blood are somehow sculpted into the likeness of Pallas Athene.
Robert Gottlieb’s new biography, Garbo, helps elucidate the mystery of why his subject removed herself from the world. Happily, too, the book is great fun to read (and, with more than 250 photographs, gorgeous to look at). Gottlieb...has an easygoing command of the material and describes Garbo’s films, and the business behind them, with insight and wit ... Given the mystique surrounding Garbo, it’s unsurprising that Gottlieb occasionally finds himself relating stories that remain unconfirmed ... In the end the many unreliable accounts don’t detract from the forcefulness of the author’s portrayal.
Gottlieb suffers, like others before him, from a distinct lack of new information about Garbo’s life ... He neatly fillets Garbo Mark III—almost fifty years of retirement—into a series of brisk thematic chapters ... There isn’t a great deal more to say.
Countless books have been written about Greta Garbo since her self-imposed exile in the 1940s, yet this comprehensive biography may be the final word ... Gottlieb’s research is so complete and his style so engaging that this book almost reads like an oral biography told through a singular voice ... This is a brilliantly written and constructed portrait of a true icon of the cinema.
... engaging and intelligent ... Gottlieb does not offer new evidence about the star. He relies substantially on — and generously cites — evidence and opinions uncovered or suggested by previous biographers and historians ... Nor does Garbo justify its existence with the kind of revelations that propel so many star biographies. Socially unacceptable realities often hidden or downplayed by Hollywood’s publicity machines — such as child abuse, multiple marriages, drug or alcohol abuse, economic exploitation, mental illness, perverse sexual behaviors and even career comebacks — won’t be found here. These were not a part of Garbo’s life (although a comeback was, for a time, considered). In fact, one suspects that if these realities had been a part of Garbo’s narrative, Gottlieb would not have been interested in writing a book about her ... is invested in the complicated mixture of temperament, talent, nonconformity and outsize public expectations that is responsible for making the famed famous. But Gottlieb does not privilege potential or realized infamy over an artist’s contributions to culture ... Other biographers have given attention to her relationships, but perhaps it is owing to Gottlieb’s editorial talent that we are spared the minutiae of their course ... Gottlieb rightly focuses on the contribution of her acting — a mix of craftsmanship and intuition — to her persona.
Searching and sensitive ... A lengthy "Garbo reader" full of excerpts and articles about her rounds out Gottlieb's perfectly paced account...and the wealth of photos is a plus. The result is a masterful look at an elusive Hollywood giant.
Skillful, admiring biography ... A nuanced portrait ... Gottlieb carefully explores Garbo’s private life ... A smoothly flowing book that provides ample answers while never quite solving all of Garbo's mysteries ... A searching life study that ought to rekindle interest in an unhappy yet brilliant artist.
